


How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

by missmichellebelle



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Melancholy, Post-Canon, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:45:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmichellebelle/pseuds/missmichellebelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In that moment, he feels as if he’s standing at the very edge of the world, toeing the line of the abyss beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> the_ugly_fic_ling challenged me to write a fic inspired by the word [occhiolism](http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/95735249861/occhiolism).
> 
>  
> 
> _n. the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room._
> 
>  
> 
> and this is what came of it. I never thought I’d write anything canon-centric, but it seems I surprised myself! by writing a cliché seeing-the-ocean fic, of course.
> 
> shout out to Florence + the Machine for the very appropriate title (like. seriously).

Levi takes careful steps forward until the edge of his boot is hanging over open air, upsetting gravel into the waters far below. He watches them travel, the distance too great to see when they hit the surface, and feels a strange _swoop_ in his stomach that he can’t explain. When he lifts his eyes, all he can see is… Space. And water. For miles and miles, the water stretches without any disruption until it disappears into the horizon, and the limitless expanse of it feels like a sudden vice on Levi’s chest.

In that moment, he feels as if he’s standing at the very edge of the world, toeing the line of the abyss beyond.

But he knows better than that. If nothing else, this endless water, this giant that must be the ocean that Eren and the others have prattled on about incessantly for years, is proof that they have barely scratched the surface of the world.

Levi feels like he can’t breath.

“Wow.”

He slides his boot fully back onto solid ground so fast, he spills more rocks into the sea below.

“Trying to send me to an early grave?” Levi growls, shooting a look at Eren where’s he come up beside him. It’s a joke in more ways than one. A grave feels long overdue for Levi, these days. Like his clock ran out long ago and somehow he’s still getting by on luck and borrowed time.

“Whoops.” Eren looks sheepish for hardly a second, and then his eyes are drawn back to the vastness that lay at their feet. Awe lights up his face, and Levi wonders how he can still look so amazed by something he’s seen time and time again. He turns his watchful eyes on Levi next, eyes hopeful and expectant, as if saying a very impatient, _So?_

“It’s big,” Levi responds, crossing his arms and reluctantly looking back out at the horizon. _It’s too big_ , he wants to say. Too vast. Too encompassing. What is the world he knows when the entirety of it could be swallowed up in the water roaring below him?

Eren laughs.

“Yeah,” he agrees, and he seems so at peace, standing there at the edge of the world, and Levi has half the mind to ask him how he manages such a thing when all Levi feels is… Small.

(Which is not a height pun, thank you).

Small and insignificant. Hopeless. Maybe even angry. Everything, up to this point, suddenly seems so…

Pointless.

Fucking pointless.

He lost comrades and friends over the long years it took to take back the small speck of land that stretched between Wall Rose and Wall Maria. He lost more, as humans slowly began to venture into the world further beyond the walls, taking it back, inch by inch, and Levi had never thought it was so literal.

They’ve lost so much and gained so little.

What has his life even meant?

He slides his boot against the cliff again, watching the gravel fall, and considers joining it.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Eren whispers, eyes trained on the water as it twists and churns far in the distance, throwing sunlight like a fire giving off sparks. Levi hums, neither confirming or denying it. Eren slides him a shy looking smile, and looks all the angry, awkward teenager Levi met so many years ago. “Knowing this was out here… It got me through a lot.” It’s an admission that Levi doesn’t need to hear—is something he knows already.

“That when everything was wrong and horrible and ugly, that this still existed somewhere.” Eren’s eyes trace the expanse of the water, and he breathes deeply, as if the putrid smelling air settles him someway.

“It doesn’t make you feel small?” Levi finds himself asking, crossing his arms and tilting his face away, as if the endless stretch of water slightly to the left is more interesting than the rest of it.

“Of course it does,” Eren responds, but his voice stays calm and mellow, like it has ever since the water had started sparkling at them in the distance the day before. “But I kind of like it.” He sounds wistful, and Levi wants to ask _why? how?_ Wants to beg Eren to teach him how to like the feeling, when all it does is turn the entirety of Levi’s life—every decision, every action, every result—into nothing. Into dust.

“Why?” Eren’s voice tilts in curiosity, and Levi can feel his eyes but doesn’t meet them. “Does it bother you?” It’s teasing—Levi, already small, being made to feel smaller by fucking _water_.

“No,” Levi bites, even though it does bother him. It bothers him more than he can articulate, even to himself. And he fucking hates it.

When he glances at Eren, Eren is still staring at him, fingers grasping his chin as if he’s thinking too hard about something, and he looks away again. Sometimes he hates the way Eren has matured. Has learned to look at the world through eyes that aren’t blinded by one single emotion at a time. If only because it means that he can’t get away with as much, not with how little seems to slip past him these days.

Well. As far as Levi is concerned, at least. Eren is still oblivious to a lot of other things around him.

“It makes me feel like I’m not so important,” Eren explains, without Levi having to say anything. Without Levi having to ask him to. And he wonders where along the way Eren learned how to read him so well. Or, maybe, when Levi stopped hiding everything behind his own personal walls. “Like maybe everything doesn’t depend on me.”

“How humble of you,” Levi mutters derisively, and Eren scowls at him.

“Shut up.” Eren looks like he’s thinking of elbowing Levi, but decides against it. Probably because they’re both standing on a fucking precipice, inches from death, but then again… Haven’t they been doing that their whole lives? Just without the literal chasm right there at their feet? “You, more than anyone, know what I mean.”

Because they understand each other. Humanity’s Strongest and Humanity’s Hope. With weights like those on their shoulders, it’s hard _not_ to understand one another.

“I guess, to me, the ocean is… Freedom.” Eren breathes again, and Levi carefully mimics the gesture. The salt stings his nose, and it brings him no sense of _calm_ whatsoever, but just the movement helps ease some of the hopelessness from his shoulders. “That’s what we’ve been fighting for, right? That’s why…” he presses his lips together, the grief of lives lost still too sharp and too near, and Levi nods in understanding. “So it represents that. Freedom for humanity, freedom for my friends, and freedom for me.” He smiles wryly. “In more ways than one.”

Levi lets the words twist through him. Let them cycle through and process, and then do it all again. He’s not going to pretend he really understands it, or that it helps the empty ache in his chest that he’s sure will always be there. He’s seen too much, and no ocean is ever going to absolve that. Maybe, if he’s lucky, it won’t always aggravate a wound that he’s spent years numbing himself to. 

That maybe one day it will be beautiful to him, too.

“You’re right, we did it all for this,” Levi agrees. “A big fucking puddle of water.”

Eren laughs again.

“Come on.” Eren nudges his arm, their fingers brushing and catching for just a second before they’re gone. “Some of the Scouts found a way down the cliffs to the beach.”

“Beach?” Levi echoes the unfamiliar word back at him. Eren is already walking away from the cliff, and Levi throws the horizon one more look. He’s not sad to turn his back on it.

“Yeah. I can’t wait until you see the sand. And seashells!” Eren’s voice is vibrating with excitement, and Levi wonders how he does it. How he can still manage to see the world the way he does, even after everything.

He thinks it’s just another one of Eren’s mysteries that he will never have the answer to.

“What the fuck is a seashell?”

**Author's Note:**

> [read, reblog, & like on tumblr](http://missmichellebelle.tumblr.com/post/130243664805/how-big-how-blue-how-beautiful)


End file.
